“That’s a dirty lie!” Alex Donnelly shouted.
“You ain’t got no cameras focused on you now, Bub,” MacGruder said. “Shut up.”
He whirled back to face Viola. “We’ll prove it, lady. With prints on the gun. Footprints on the vacant lot, fingerprints you left in that cottage on Linden.” He stepped over to her. “You’ll have to go downtown with me.”
Donnelly rushed toward his wife. MacGruder pushed him back. “But,” he warned them, “if I decide we can’t prove it, that she didn’t do it, I’ll be coming back. You folks stick around — Donnelly, Illman, Elwyn, Drumm. You see, I ain’t through with a case ’til the judge passes sentence.”
He guided her through the door and Donnelly sank behind the desk in his chair, burying his face in his palms. Drumm thought it was nerve-wracking to hear a man tom by sobs. He eased out of the room. Illman and Elwyn followed.
Illman sighed heavily. “Nothing we can do for him. Best to leave him alone at a lime like this.”
Drumm grunted. Elwyn mumbled shakily that he was going to the living room to find a drink. The fat agent waddled off, and Illman said uneasily, “I’ll be getting along, Mr. Drumm. Can’t tell you what this has done to me.”
Drumm sat in the wicker chair on the broad veranda and watched the sunset. He tried to sort his thoughts. He kept seeing a dead, beautiful girl. And if he had to stick around this town much longer old man Speare would be jumping down his throat.
He remembered the way Viola had looked holding the gun in the bedroom upstairs. How did guilty people look? He was supposed to know, he guessed. She didn’t look guilty. Was it a smooth attempt to frame her? Say the killer had seen her approach, had known she would leave fingerprints, that the police would learn she had been in the cottage at the time of Georgia’s death. Had he planted the gun, thinking to clinch the case with that?
The most important thing in murder, Drumm knew, was the almost fanatical desire of the killer to remain invisible. It wasn’t too far-fetched to think that maybe a killer had seen Viola and had played opportunity to its limit in order to give the cops a fall guy and get the case closed, in which event the killer need no longer be afraid.
Drumm realized that he was hungry. He wondered what he could find in Donnelly’s kitchen. He took out his black notebook and under the heading “Expenses” jotted “Dinner, $2.25.”
He got up with a soft exhalation of air through his button-like nose. In the hallway, he picked up the phone. When the operator asked for his number he said, “9211J, please.”
Alter one ring, a voice at the other end said, “Mr. Elwyn’s residence.”
Drumm hung up quietly, and went in the living-room. Hick Elwyn was mixing bourbon and soda.
Drumm said, “Hello, killer.”
Elwyn’s gaze jerked up. “What was that?”
“I said you killed Georgia Donnelly. Alex Donnelly was determined to pay his daughter off if it took every dime he owned. He felt he owed it to her. She really was his daughter, too. So you knew you’d be whistling for that fifty grand that Donnelly borrowed from you for the oil deal. He’d pay his daughter and let you go hang.”
Elwyn’s fat face was a study in mixed emotions. “I’ll not take your lopsided, insulting humor!” he thundered. The glass trembled in his hand.
“Ha, ha,” said Drumm drily. “So you think it’s funny? Well, think again. MacGruder was right. We will prove it by little things. We’ll trace that gun over the whole country, if need be. We’ll take a nitrate test of your hands. We’ll...” The wind jerked out of him as Elwyn pulled a gun.
“You’re a little too damn smart, Drumm. So was the girl. You’ll get the same treatment she got. I had to hate that fifty grand back that Alex Donnelly owes me. I’m in a squeeze. I lent it to him expecting a big return. Now it’s gone — and his daughter came, threatening to destroy our chances of the new contract that would enable him to pay off. Or if the contract did get signed, she was going to take his dough. I had no choice. Now I have no choice, either, because I’m killing to save myself.”
“Sure,” Drumm said, his voice thick despite his efforts. “I used the old process of elimination — and got you. Donnelly, I knew, would not kill his own daughter. And loving Donnelly, as she does, I doubt that Viola would, either. Illman, the lawyer, might have done it had the girl not been the real daughter. In that case, he might have tried to sell her out to Donnelly for more money than she was paying. Which would have led to his disbarment and disgrace when she found out — if she were able to talk. But since she was Donnelly’s real daughter, the only way the lawyer could have gained was by pushing her case for her, for since it was not a con scheme, she could get another lawyer any time.
“That left you, Elwyn, with strong motive. And with a telephone smack on Illman’s party line. His number is 9211R, and with the scarcity of telephones in this town, you had to get on a party line, which suited you fine, for yours is 9211J, and by picking up the receiver every few seconds, you could keep track by listening in on any calls that went in and out of Illman’s house, three blocks away from your place. You heard me call Illman over here this afternoon. You learned definitely then from my call that Donnelly was going to pay off to the girl, and that’d you’d be in the cold for your dough. You...”
He sprang abruptly at Elwyn, moving with deceptive speed. The gun roared, tearing a jagged hole in Drumm’s coat, burning his side with the explosion blast. He grappled for the gun. Then Elwyn was jerked from him.
Alex Donnelly tore the gun from Elwyn’s grasp. He smashed Elwyn in the face and the fat man sprawled on the carpet. Donnelly stood over him, his blazing eyes begging Rick Elwyn to get up. But Elwyn stayed on the floor.
“That heavy voice of his brought me to the door,” Donnelly said. “I listened, Drumm. This guy is going to the gas chamber.” He held himself with an effort from kicking his daughter’s fear-sodden killer in the face.
Drumm looked at Donnelly’s skinned knuckles with respect. “You weren’t kidding, were you, when you said you didn’t use stuntmen all the time.”
He watched with one colorless eyebrow cocked as Donnelly dragged Elwyn toward the hall and phone.
Drumm sighed, touched his burned side and ruined coat gingerly. He took out his little black notebook and under the heading “Expenses” he wrote carefully: “One gray worsted suit, $15.00.” Then after a moment’s reflection, he erased that. Finally, after deliberation, he wrote: “One gray worsted suit, seat of the trousers worn thin, $44.50.”